In living cells, protein-protein interactions are essential in many biological processes, such as cell-cell interaction, and cell signaling. In particular, membrane proteins embedded in cell membranes, which represent 20-30% of the total proteins encoded by the human genome, play a crucial role in intra- and inter-cellular interactions, such as in diseases like cancer, diabetes mellitus, and schizophrenia, for example. In order to treat these diseases, it is critical to understand the mechanisms driving the membrane proteins involved. Although a plethora of model systems presenting the membrane proteins are available, their instability reduces their accessibility and usefulness.
Thus, membrane proteins have been widely explored and investigated as one of the most popular and viable drug targets in the pharmaceutical industry. However, working with membrane proteins is not easy, given that their amphiphilic nature requires protection from the native environment or its mimics.
Therefore, there remains a need to provide for an artificial cell membrane system which overcomes, or at least alleviates, the above problems.